A symposium on Jews and Native Americans, two peoples made into Others by Christian Euro-America in fascinatingly similar yet different ways: as remnants of primitivity, as tribal peoples, as enduring threats and unassimilable enemies, and as romanticized traditionals possessing the solution to the ills of modernity.
Co-sponsored with the Institute for Israel and Jewish Studies.
Schedule
8:30-9:00 am: Registration and light breakfast
9:00-9:15 am: Opening Remarks
Jeremy Dauber, Jonathan Schorsch
9:15-10:00 am: Jonathan Boyarin, excerpts from The Unconverted Self: Jews, Indians, and the Identity of Christian Europe (Chicago, 2010)
10:10-11:45 am: Session I: Social Relations
Jonathan Boyarin, Christian Cwik, David Koffman, Michael Rom
12:00-1:00 pm: Lunch (provided, on-site)
1:05-2:45 pm: Session II: Textual Relations
Sarah Casteel, Jennifer Glaser, Stephen Katz, Jack Kugelmass, Alan Mintz, Rachel Rubenstein
3:00-4:30 pm: Session III: Theopolitics
Christopher Bracken, James Hatley, Nimachia Hernandez, Akim Reinhardt, [R. Zalman Schachter-Shalomi]
4:45-5:30 pm Wrap-up conversation
Participants and Papers
Boyarin, Jonathan (U. of North Carolina, Dept. of Religious Studies), “Trickster?s Children: Paul Radin, Stanley Diamond and Filiation in Anthropology.”
Bracken, Chris (U. of Alberta), “When Indians were Jews: William Apess?s Racialized Concept of Right.”
Casteel, Sarah Phillips (Carleton University), “Sephardism and Marranism in Native American Fiction of the Quincentenary: Dorris and Erdrich’s /The Crown of Columbus /and Vizenor’s /The Heirs of Co-lumbus.”
Cwik, Christian (History, Cartagena de Indias, Colombia; University of Cologne, Germany), “Sephardic networks and the Guajira Peninsula Contraband in the 17th and 18th Centuries.”
Glaser, Jennifer (Assistant Professor, English and Comparative Literature, University of Cincinnati), “Sovereignty, Diaspora, and the Indigene in Michael Chabon?s The Yiddish Policeman?s Union.”
Hatley, James (Department of Philosophy, Fulton School of Liberal Arts, Salisbury University), “Spider Woman Naming Adam Naming Spider Woman: Midrash as Storytelling as Midrash.”
Hernandez, Nimachia (Independent Scholar), “Coming Home in America: Native American and Jew-ish Participation in the Making of a National Narrative.”
Katz, Stephen (Indiana University, Jewish Studies Program), “A One-Sided Dialogue: Lisitzky?s Indian Poems.”
Koffman, David (NYU, History), “Manifesting Jewish Destiny: Jews, Native Americans, and the Violent Frontier.”
Kugelmass, Jack (U. of Florida-Gainesville, Dept. of Anthropology), “„Since I Saved You, You Belong to Me:? A Yiddish Pseudoethnographic Account of „Primitive Tribes and Civilized Communities? in Peru.”
Mintz, Alan (JTS), “Three Constructions of the Native American in American Hebrew Poetry.”
Reinhardt, Akim (History, Towson University), “Contested and Overlapping Notions of Indigenous-ness Among Jews and Indians.”
Rom, Michael (U. of Toronto), “The Métis Messiah: Louis Riel and the Jews.”
Rubinstein, Rachel (Hampshire, Jewish American Literature and Culture), “Tribes Lost and Found: Mestizaje and the Jewish Question.”
Schachter-Shalomi, Rabbi Zalman (World Wisdom Chair, The Naropa Institute), “Jewish Dialogue with Native Americans.”